About Me

I have spent the first half of my career
as a pastor of the church, and the second half as a teacher in the university and the church. I experience much satisfaction working in both worlds. As I engage in ongoing research to support my third activity which is writing, I am constantly finding many interesting items on the net and from friends which I edit and share on my Colleagues List. That way, you too might enjoy information from the worlds of religion and culture. As of September 2016, this profile has received almost 1,800 hits.
Thanks for your interest!
.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Colleagues List, January 13th, 2013

Now "Quicklinks" are included with many items.
Otherwise, scroll down to find your selection
in the body of the blog, as in the past.

*****

Dear Friends:

In this first issue of the New Year, I
share with you a book notice of "Open
Heart" by the famous Jewish author,
Elie Wiesel. Secondly, I offer a book
review of a collection of essays by a
group of Canadian Anglicans - "Guide
for the Christian Perplexed" edited by
Thomas Power of Trinity and Wycliffe
Colleges, University of Toronto.

I hope you enjoy both books.

--

Colleague Comment this week is from an
old friend we first met in France. He
is Fr. Ned Carolan of Dublin, Ireland.
Nice to hear from you Ned!

Elie Wiesel delivers a message of hope
and tolerance in Open Heart. A successful
husband, father, grandfather, teacher, and
writer, he is an asset to humankind. He has
turned despondency into a message of approval
and optimism.

Mr. Wiesel packages equal parts beauty and
astonishing description in an impossibly
concise manner. Few authors have possessed
such capacity for succinctness and brevity
with magnificent dexterity.

At 82 and ill, Mr. Wiesel remains a powerful
ambassador of tolerance and hope, for humanity
will always require this message, a bright
light in the darkness of despair, a signpost
on humanity's road toward destruction and
"turn to tolerance and survive."

This is Elie Wiesel's eternal message. We
are each a spark of light in the darkness
of destruction.

- Charles S. Weinblatt

--

Author's Words:

A team of specialists is waiting for me in
the emergency room. The very first blood test
instantly reveals the gravity of my condition.
There is a definite risk of heart attack.

"You have five blocked arteries. You require
open heart surgery..."

My wife and son are not good at hiding their
anxiety. Their smiles seem forced. My wife
Marion says "The doctors are optimistic. The
surgeon they propose is world-renowned..."

Through the tears that darken the future, a
thought awakens, a deeper concern, a deeper
sorrow. Shall I see them again...?

The door to the OR closes. I am alone...

I panic. They are going to put me to sleep -
and I shall never wake up again.

Elie Wiesel continues to remain among us, even
at age 82, as one of the great writers of the
Shoah (Holocaust) and of memory - calling us
ever again to never forget that tragic moment
in the history of humanity.

After learning that he had, in fact, escaped
death, Wiesel writes: "I belong to a generation
(of Jews) that has often felt abandoned by God
and betrayed by mankind. And yet, I believe that
we must not give up on either.

If Wiesel could go through what he did and still
believe in God and in humanity, there may yet
be hope for you and I.

Wiesel realizes that he has come from this
experience a changed man.

"Life may diminish me, but it will not destroy
me. The body is not eternal, but the idea of
the soul is. The brain may be buried, but
memory will survive it."

From this we learn that Wiesel has been
given a new gift of discernment. He can
more clearly distinquish between the
importance of this life, and of eternity.

While some things have changed, he realizes
that he remains much the same.

"What is different," he says, "is that I know
that every moment is a new beginning, every
handshake a promise..."

He concludes: "I know that eternities ago, the
day after the liberation (from the camps) when
some of us had to choose between anger and
gratitude, my choice was the right one..."

"My life? I go on breathing from minute to
minute, from prayer to prayer."

--

I encourage you to buy and live with this
book - rereading it again and again - as
I have. While we struggle with the meanings
of life after life and life after death,
Wiesel is a good guide.

People of faith cherished Maimonides the Jewish
philosopher whose book “Guide to the Perplexed”
was published in 1190 CE. In our times they
continue to seek help from spiritual guides
much like him.

Thomas P. Power and fifteen others, writing
mainly from an evangelical Anglican tradition,
will not disappoint the modern conflicted reader.
Their topics include: what we know of Jesus, the
meaning of suffering, the function of doctrine,
the pleasures and complications of sexuality,
and diverse forms of spirituality.

Thoughtful Christians are always legitimately
perplexed. Sadly, many moderns have not found
safe places to address their confusions with
intellectual candor and integrity. But this
book will help.

The writers of these chapters, largely from
Wycliffe College Toronto, add substance to
the theologies they espouse. “We have called
the book a guide. We are not advocating a
particular theological tradition or presenting
the manifesto of a school of thought,” declare
Alan Hayes and Thomas Power in the Introduction.
Each writer has a point of view but all try to
recognize the legitimacy of other points of
view and they respect the reader’s right to
weigh the evidence freely.

One of the first chapters to which this reviewer
was drawn was Ephriam Radner’s “God Bless the
Atheists: Faith and Anti-faith Today.” Radner
gives helpful background to the rise of what has
been termed “the New Atheism.” While clearly
opposed to many perspectives of modern atheists
(Radner considers them not that new) he offers a
balanced critique and includes counter-arguments
from outside the church.

There will always be people of faith and anti-faith.
Atheism today should not be viewed as an enemy, but
as an encouragement to more clarity and substance
on our part.

Many of the other topics discussed in this book
reflect the same careful thought as the chapter
just described. Readers will be engaged to grow
through exposure to other perspectives from
spiritual guides demonstrating solid faith
grounding.

---

Reviewer's Bio:

Wayne A. Holst teaches religion and culture
at the University of Calgary and helps to
coordinate Adult Spiritual Development at
St. David’s United Church in that city.

*****

COLLEAGUE COMMENT

To Marlene and Wayne -

To wish you all the blessings of the coming
of Christ and the New Year!

Thanks you ever so much for the regular
installments (of Colleagues List) in my
e-mail. I look forward to them each week -
you have a real apostolate.

If there is no friendship with [the poor]
and no sharing of the life of the poor,
then there is no authentic commitment
to liberation, because love exists only
among equals.

- Gustavo Gutiérrez,
"A Theology of Liberation"

--

In keeping silent about evil, in burying
it so deep within us that no sign of it
appears on the surface, we are implanting
it, and it will rise up a thousand fold
in the future. When we neither punish nor
reproach evildoers, we are not simply
protecting their trivial old age, we are
thereby ripping the foundations of justice
from beneath new generations.

- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn,
"The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956"

--

When it comes to faith, what a living,
creative, active, powerful thing it is.
It cannot do other than good at all times.
It never waits to ask whether there is
some good work to do, rather, before the
question is raised, it has done the deed,
and keeps on doing it.

- Martin Luther

--

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

- Margaret Mead

--

I have learned that when we begin listening
to each other, and when we talk about things
that matter to us, the world begins to change.
Human conversation is the most ancient and
easiest way to cultivate the conditions of
change — personal change, community, and
organizational change.

- Margaret Wheatley

--

To be fully human, we must recognize the
full humanity of all other people.

The best is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire, in a letter to Frederik
of Prussia

Voltaire’s words come as a bit of
a shock: we are more accustomed to
motivational speakers who exhort
us to aim high, to pursue excellence,
to visualize the win. But at least
one Canadian General (now retired)
adapted the phrase for his own time,
place, and project environment.

As he used to tell his staff, The
perfect is the enemy of the good enough.

May even the perfectionists in the crowd
(ahem...) enjoy the gift of motivation,
overcoming the paralysis that often results
from pursuing the impossibly distant goal
of perfection, and instead pursuing an
achievable ‘good enough’.